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Topic: Change things up this season? (Read 5045 times)

Someone mentioned that maybe we should try starting a little later (like an hour) since we seem to be flying through runs. It might attract a couple of people that wouldn't come otherwise because it seemed "too early".

This brings up an interesting question - should we use this season to try a few different things? If event 1 is any indication of the season to come, and based on last year's participation, light attendance might give us a chance to try new things with how we run the events, course setups, and such.

A later start as long as the event concludes by 4:30ish could work.Other possibilities could include promotions to encourage new folks. One thought is if you bring a new driver then we comp you a $5 gift cert for Jeremy's Tasty Eats. I spent quite a bit of time with a fellow at Event 1 that came to Batavia last year to watch. He wants to get involved in Solo but right now hasn't found a car in his budget and wondered about co-driving. Jeremy tried this last year but I wonder if we could do it more formally as a region some how.Let's kick some ideas around we have much to gain.

My only question to the "starting later" idea is when? As it is now, you can show up at 9am and have enough time to register, tech, and walk the course once before the driver's meeting. Are you suggesting pushing it back an hour? Driver's meeting at 11, last car finishes by 4?

I think that one of our events at SEAD should be a dual course pro style. I haven't quiet worked out the logistics of timing, but with the help of FLR's timing equipment, I think we can make it happen.

I'm not a fan of starting later. I don't think it will have any real impact. I'm sure most people aren't staying away because its awful to get up and be somewhere by 9am.What we need is to get our schedule out there, and entice people to come.

I'm OK with something like bring first timer and you both get $5 off (because in the end we add the chance of getting a new regular on board).

We've also kicked around the idea of trying to go the the shred and regan cruise night and pass out flyers/schedules or something like that to try an lure new people.

In the end though, I really think its the same problem as real estate..... location location location. We'd be pulling more people from other regions if we had a more entertaining site to use, and right now we just don't.

Start Time: Can we poll people on this site or just try it once with sufficient prior notification? How about a short survey at Reg next event to catch those that don't visit our website? What else do we want to ask?

I like guerilla marketing conceptually. We need the right approach to communicate that what we offer is skilled (think 'chess meets road racing') competition in a SAFE environment but you will be blown away that it is legal and so inexpensive. We teach and nuture...............

I spent quite a bit of time with a fellow at Event 1 that came to Batavia last year to watch. He wants to get involved in Solo but right now hasn't found a car in his budget and wondered about co-driving.

I'm that guy. Stuck with a three hour commute to Cleveland in a Yukon and actively looking for a car for Autocross and DD for the commute. I got to Event 1 kind of late as we had a communion on Saturday. I enjoyed watching the fun runs and got a lot of good info from Bruce. If anyone sees somthing in the 5 to6k price range please let me know I'd really like an '03 protege5 in good shape but would consider any thing suitable for both uses. Thanks Paul Heinen paulheinen at verizon dot net

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JayS

My guess is you'll chase away just as many people who prefer getting an earlier start and having more afternoon time as you would gain lazy people who can't set an alarm.

The thing I hear from people isn't about getting up early or even the only lot being ECC-N.... it's spending 5-6 hours for 5-8 minutes of seat time. $50 track days killed it for a lot of people. Maybe with the lack of $50 track days due to Dunnville closing people will start getting that cheap racing itch and be willing to give up 6 hours working and waiting for 8 minutes of driving again.

I don't know if running a morning and afternoon session is possible with the current attendance but I wonder how much more interest it would generate.

Hey Jay. Good to hear from you. We had what 8 runs in an elapsed time of approx. 6 hours for event one? We ran heats so there was a bit of downtime in there. If we can continuously roll cars without heats we could process 80 cars in the same amount of time with 6 runs I think. The actual course design for event one was not particularly efficient because the car on course was 75%+ done with its run before we could start the next car. We ran the config due to low reg and a real threat of rain.Anyone want to help here?

JayS

I know I'd be at more events if I could do it like yesterday. 6 runs and I left at 1:10. Plenty of time to get home and still have some good Sunday family time.

I know you guys were going to run 3 more runs and possibly fun runs but getting 6 runs in 2.5 hours felt about perfect to me. Of course, I know my car isn't really competitive or even autocross prepped so if I were out there for point I probably would have wanted those other 3 runs.

The only downside is that enough people left like that and it made work assignments interesting for the afternoon. I think if we have heats like this in the future that we are going to have to reassign work assignments, or possibly even redo the heats based on who is still there.

c_cataldi

The last issue of Sportscar (May, p. 41) had some good ideas on different ways the club could run events. One I'd love to see would be the Mirror Khana, which is "a loop solo course with a pair of parallel straightaways. 'The wiggly parts of the course connect the ends of the straightaways. . . A start/finish bisects both straights. One car starts on each side, drives the entire course and the first one back to his own start line wins the match.'" It is double elimination, and what we would need would be someone to stand at the start line and arbitrate the winner. Close call? Rerun. All you need is one timer. The looser's time is not recorded.